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Kafka on the Shore
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  • Published: 3 October 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099458326
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

Kafka on the Shore

Formats & editions
Paperback
3 Oct 2005
Hardback
15 Nov 2022
EBook
10 Oct 2011
Audiobook
29 Oct 2020
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Cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky... A bewitching and wildly inventive novel from a master stylist

*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*

Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy.

The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down.

As their parallel odysseys unravel, cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a ghost-like pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night; a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since World War II. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle - one of many which combine to create an elegant and dreamlike masterpiece.

*Murakami's new book Novelist as a Vocation is available now*

'Wonderful... Magical and outlandish' Daily Mail

'Hypnotic, spellbinding' The Times

'Cool, fluent and addictive' Daily Telegraph
  • Published: 3 October 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099458326
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

About the author

Haruki Murakami

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon.

In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women, Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.

portrait photo of Haruki Murakami

Also by Haruki Murakami

Super-Frog Saves Tokyo
The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Norwegian Wood
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Men Without Women
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)
1Q84
See all

Praise for Kafka on the Shore

Wonderful... Magical and outlandish

Daily Mail

A magnificently bewildering achievement... Brilliantly conceived, bold in its surreal scope, sexy and driven by a snappy plot... Exuberant storytelling

Independent on Sunday

Cool, fluent and addictive

Daily Telegraph

Hypnotic, spellbinding

The Times

Addictive... Exhilarating... A pleasure

Evening Standard

Murakami's most addictive fix to date

Independent

Engrossing and wildly inventive

Times Literary Supplement

Laden with philosophical overtones and enchanting wit

Observer

Murakami's exquisitely simple prose and deft evocation of the surreal are captivating and sublime

Sunday Times

The mysteries are never tainted by explanation, merely beautifully described, delivering a hypnotic read

Times Higher Education Supplement

Wonderful... Magical and outlandish

Daily Mail

Cool, fluent and addictive

Daily Telegraph

Hypnotic, spellbinding

The Times

A magnificently bewildering achievement... Brilliantly conceived, bold in its surreal scope, sexy and driven by a snappy plot... Exuberant storytelling

Independent on Sunday

Addictive... Exhilarating... A pleasure

Evening Standard

Murakami's most addictive fix to date

Independent

Engrossing and wildly inventive

Times Literary Supplement

Laden with philosophical overtones and enchanting wit

Observer

Murakami's exquisitely simple prose and deft evocation of the surreal are captivating and sublime.

Sunday Times

The mysteries are never tainted by explanation, merely beautifully described, delivering a hypnotic read

Jamie Sims, Times Higher Education Supplement

Discover more

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